Student Government Gives the Students an Update

In an open forum held by North Dakota State’s Student Government, Student Body President and Vice President Mason Wenzel and Katie Mastel addressed the progress of their platform with the help of other student government officials.

At the forum, Wenzel and Mastel touched on the three aspects of their platform (community, finance and academics) by highlighting the programs beneath each pillar.

One of their most notable changes has been the integration of online courses into tuition rates. They referred to the model of having online classes being paid for separately as “archaic,” and their intention was to revamp the system to make students’ lives easier.

Another adjustment they’ve pushed to make is to include course fees in tuition. That means that those art, engineering or other courses would no longer have hidden course fees. They are still working toward this.

They have accomplished keeping the amount of money students are paying in fees the same. They continue to advocate against fee increases.

While their interactive fee chart is still in its developing phase, they have managed to simplify organizational funding and cover Scantrons with what students already pay. The next step is to do the same for blue books.

Some community initiatives Student Government has engaged in is coffee after class, reformatting listservs and working on the Assault Prevention Program.

To reformat listservs, Student Government has made them only twice a week with multiple announcements to increase efficiency. Phase two of this project is to roll department listservs into one to keep students’ inboxes clean.

Their work toward the Assault Prevention Program includes the Stand Together project, incentivizing programs that communicate about sexual assault and victim survivor kits.

A change that students can see immediately is some reorganization on the NDSU webpage where all safety features like SARA or safety app information can now be found on one page instead of scattered about all over NDSU’s website. This simplification is small, but will make students’ lives safer and simpler. This can be found on the NDSU page under the “Safety Tool Kit.”

Student Government has made maintaining the yell leaders a priority. Student Government values the yellow suits at the football games. They’ve also used the yell leaders’ positions to enforce positive chants instead of the former derogatory chant or other hurtful phrases.

Another thing Student Government has done is they have had very real conversations about bike share and whether it’s worth the investment. Ultimately, the answer to that will take more meetings and talking with Great Rides Bike Share.

Overall, Student Government has done their fair share of work, but still has a lot more work to do.